How's It Slangin' Happy?

i walked into the classroom and a few of the students greeted me with a pleasant 'good morning,' to which i of course replied 'what's up,' and was met with about 25 blank expressions... again, 'what's up." nope. 'this is idioms in conversation, right?' 'yeah, so have any of you ever heard this phrase before?' a couple guys nod their heads and the rest stare at me unslangfully. i grab a piece of chalk and scrawl on the blackboard this immortal phrase and offer 4 responses:

a) the ceiling
b) the sky
c) the stars
d) nothing much, you?

'which is the correct response?'

and thus began my self-designed course on 'idioms in conversation,' or as i explained that first day, slang. i let them know that "what's up" is the most popular slang phrase in america and then told'em that if they understood, they'd die right then and there: "hieu chet lien!" which, to my knowledge, is currently the most popular vietnamese slang phrase, at least among the teenagers and young adults i've met.

every language has an ever-changing lexicon of slang that helps keep the language fresh. but not fresh like that prince of belair ('cause now he's wack); i mean fresh like punky brewster slapping arnold in the mouth for not knowing what she was talkin' 'bout... nahmean?

"hieu chet lien!"

yeah these people got slang too. in vietnamese, my name, said the way i'd say it, is slang for crazy: mat. i can't find it in any dictionary though, which would genreally mean that it is in fact slang. i'm not sure, but i think i remember someone telling me it's actually an adaptation of 'mad,' as in: "I'M MAD!! AB-SO-LUUUTE-LY MADDD I TELL YA!!! MUAHAHAAHAAAHAAAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" but i wouldn't know the first thing about being crazy. ok so to be honest, it's a title i wear proudly, declaring to 'most everyone i meet when i tell them my name: toi la mat, ma khong khung dien, which (i'm told) means "i'm crazy, but i'm not really crazy" - a good opener that at some point i usually follow up with a mat mat, haa?. Except this phrase is much harder to pronounce correctly and i usually end up saying "did you just lose your eye?" instead of the intended "you just lost face, huh?" which is an idiomatic expression that actually operates in both english and vietnamese [still part of the first lesson].

but vietnamese doesn't have nearly as rich a catalogue of slang as english. that's word to my momma. what other language could shit all over another as graphically devoid of effort as this one. shit, did you even catch that? this is actually part of a lesson (without using those exact phrases) i taught on monday: the slang found in an unreleased ghostface track called the watch. go'head, read through it. do you understand what he's talking 'bout? 'cause these 20-something-year-olds i played the song for didn't have a clue. i left the title blank on the lyrics sheet i'd handed out and one of them straight-faced guessed it was called 'the nigga.' i thought i'd shit myself because i asked the whole class and nobody knew what 'nigger' meant, so i had to provide a brief explanation of slavery, racism, and bananas. ok so i didn't mention anything about bananas, but i did let them know that if they said that word in america and/or in the presence of a black person (actual words) they were liable to getting their ass kicked. interestingly, some of them already knew what an 'ass kicking' was.

the best part of the lesson though came when i asked them if they knew what 'shit' meant. they did, but only understood the strict definition of the word, feces, which for those who might not have understood, i modelled by pointing to my butt and then the floor, and making a stink-face at it (oh and i said 'poop,' to hint at it but they'd never heard of it... imagine that). at one point in the song, ghostface uses it in 4 consecutive lines to mean 4 different things and we discussed each of these meanings. given their preconceived notions of what 'shit' meant, they found the line "i'm the don of this shit" particularly amusing after i'd told them that 'don' meant boss or king, and then asked them if they could guess what the line meant.

what an awesome class. over the course of just 2 weeks at 1 hour a day, i have allowed these hopefully american-bound vietnamese students to distinguish between 'hanging out' and 'chilling,' a 'dork' and a 'nerd,' a 'dickhead' and a 'carpet licker...' uhhh, well the last two just sorta came up. one girl said that her friends sometimes call her an 'airhead' and a 'dickhead,' and i had to explain why it's generally incorrect to call a girl a dickhead. "dick means penis. do you all know what penis means? ok good because i didn't want to have to draw a picture." but actually yesterday i did draw a picture of a penis... with arms and legs and a smiley face because a student said that cocks would go to his imaginary restaurant, so i had to explain why that would be virtually impossible. and earlier one of the guys from that same group had asked for some slang terms for lesbians and i came up with 'dike' and 'carpet licker.' of course i made sure that they also knew what a carpet was and what lick meant so that they could understand the metaphor... but only because i think understanding metaphors is important.

today was the last day so i told them my choice for the honor of 'class clown,' a student who, for one of the in-class activities, came up with the term 'lowman:' a man who can't have babies. i laughed because at the time i didn't understand what the hell he was talking about, and then later laughed some more when i realized that what he really meant was something like 'limp dick.' classic.

then, right at the end of class, the student who i deemed the 'class nerd,' who's actually a cool kid but had the highest average, blew me away with this gem: i told the class i'd be going up to hanoi in a couple weeks for tet, and he pointed out that his friend, one of the other students in the class could show me where to go. his friend chimes in that yes, he is indeed a tour guide, but it sounded like something different came out when he said it. "tour gay? oh yeah, you're gay. that's right, he's a tour gay" and continues to harass his friend as the other one tries to clarify, "guide! i said guiiide!" yes. i wished i could go back and give him an even higher score for his excellent usage of one of my favorite slang words that was not only impromptu, but accurate as well, but decided that would be gay.